Pet Shop Boys Community

George Carlin

I learn so much here.

gregf wrote:

wiki wrote:Critics of the term have argued that its proponents are "neo-snobs"

Oh dear ; I am getting out of touch.

The older I get the more I am drawn back to the wisdom of one of the great American novels,
To Kill A Mockingbird, a book and movie I first consumed a long time ago.

For me the key is the power struggle of the court case. The conservative power elite
must stir up racism and encourage ignorance to say in power. The unholy alliance of
the very rich and very stupid. And now we have a new generation. Where did the 60's go.

There is nothing new about the creation of working class whites as a social problem, they are the west's historic 'other'. Objects on to which the middle rather than upper class paint their own prejudices and fears. If we considerd the white working class to be an ethnic rather than economic group then perhaps we might be more careful about the ways in which we denigrate them. Given that David Walliams, Jeremy Kyle et al have made so much money out of peddling wht are fundamentally hegemonic stereotypes peraps it is time that they ploughed some of their money into helping those less fortunate than themselves rather than hanging about at the Ivy.

Maggie Thatcher ruined working class communities up and down the country, this rampant individualism, the me me me that I see every day as a teacher is her legacy. 'Chavs' has no biological disposition to bad behaviour and despite what some have written here have no political allegiances at all given that many of them have a bleak future regardless of which party is in power.

raggatwin wrote:There is nothing new about the creation of working class whites as a social problem, they are the west's historic 'other'. Objects on to which the middle rather than upper class paint their own prejudices and fears. If we considerd the white working class to be an ethnic rather than economic group then perhaps we might be more careful about the ways in which we denigrate them. Given that David Walliams, Jeremy Kyle et al have made so much money out of peddling wht are fundamentally hegemonic stereotypes peraps it is time that they ploughed some of their money into helping those less fortunate than themselves rather than hanging about at the Ivy.

Maggie Thatcher ruined working class communities up and down the country, this rampant individualism, the me me me that I see every day as a teacher is her legacy. 'Chavs' has no biological disposition to bad behaviour and despite what some have written here have no political allegiances at all given that many of them have a bleak future regardless of which party is in power.

You over-romanticise the working classes. Most of them are too stupid to be anything other than a stereotype. I think that British popular culture is actually now a prole hegemony and little more than an egregious, shallow, pig ignorant worshipping at the altar of Mammon and celebrity.

I do not over romanticise working class people, i am no fan of the honourable labourer carricature so often propounded by the liberal section of the british left, a carricature that blanketly imagines the working class as a mass of cloth cap wearing, hardworking dupes - this is a mythology, some are lazy and ignorant - the lumpen proletariat. However the working class are actively discriminated against on a historical basis, be this through their perpetual demonisation in popular culture, their historical underachievement in education or by the ways in which many areas of life are not open to them due to an obsession with market forces and commodification brought in under Thatcher's government.

You have to ask yourself where this 'chav' culture comes from. Eytmologically 'chavvy' was a term used by romany gypsys to describe their children and was a term that moved out of this community and became popular in East and South East london. It was no suprise then when parts of East london came to be colonised by middle class 'creatives' in the late 90s that this term would come to gain the meaning and currency it does today, middle class people doing what they have always done and take the language of the working class and use it as a mere plaything something to be both exotisised and then trivialised - from My Fair lady, to Blur to the Al Murray. 'Celebrity culture' was not created by the working class, they do not have access to printing presses, tv, radio stations and newspapers it was began by the owners of these industries and then given a faux working class sheen - step forward Jade Goody, The Sun Says column and Kerry Katona. Working class culture is continually (re)presented as feckless, sexually 'immoral' and entirely dysfuntional - consider the differing representations of the middle class family in 'My Family' and the Gallaghers in Shameless. My family slightly eccentric - as different from 'mad' - but essentially okay, you wouldn't mind living next door to them, in fact you would quite like it, the n look at the Gallaghers - drunks, drug abusers, thieves the list of stereotypes goes on. 'Chav' is a discourse, a way of talking and thinking about things the root of which is not from the working class. Jade Goody was decribed as a working class hero, I don't know any working class person who considers her a hero. She was a puppet, a media invention to remind us how thick working class people are and how they get what they deserve...... just in case we had forgotten.

....and the black and white minstrels is not poiltically correct....